“A senior administration official told The Associated Press Monday that Obama has approved establishment of the new unit, to be known as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which will be overseen by the National Security Council. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the program has not yet been officially announced.”

Reader Randy Tollefson writes: “Does this mean Obama now has a Torture Czar?” I’m sure it doesn’t. The United States doesn’t torture.

WASHINGTON POST: The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Investigators are looking into allegations that laws protecting classified information were breached when three lawyers showed their clients the photographs, the sources said. The lawyers were apparently attempting to identify CIA officers and contractors involved in the agency’s interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in facilities outside the United States, where the agency employed harsh techniques.

If detainees at the U.S. military prison in Cuba are tried, either in federal court or by a military commission, defense lawyers are expected to attempt to call CIA personnel to testify.

The photos were taken by researchers hired by the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, to support military counsel at Guantanamo Bay, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the inquiry. It was unclear whether the Justice Department is also examining those organizations.

Both groups have long said that they will zealously investigate the CIA’s interrogation program at “black sites” worldwide as part of the defense of their clients. But government investigators are now looking into whether the defense team went too far by allegedly showing the detainees the photos of CIA officers, in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes.

American liberals want to defend terrorists at all costs and provide them with Constitutional protections. But in doing so, they deny those same protections to American citizens. The irony is rich if it weren’t so serious.

Abraham Lincoln would have called these acts of treason. I doubt the self-proclaimed reborn Lincoln at 1600 Penna will feel any sympathy, except for the ACLU.

While the Iranian people are yearning for freedom from a dictator and putting their lives on the line — President Obama chooses not to golf this weekend, but rather to go get some ice cream.

I am confident that Presidents Reagan, Bush (both) and Clinton would be forcefully encouraging pro-democracy efforts in Iran — as their policies have dictated throughout those years. While we are on the verge of a huge victory for freedom in the Post 9/11 world, our President fiddles.

The best President Obama can do is send chilly signals to the Iranian people while the ice cream slides down his throat. Pathetic and disappointing.

Obama supporters defended his silence. Anything he said to endorse the protests, they argued, would taint the protesters’ message and damage their cause.

The protesters, many of whom held signs written in English, seemed to disagree. “On several occasions, I’ve had supporters of Mousavi say we need President Obama,” reported CNN’s Reza Sayah, from Tehran. When Wolf Blitzer asked Sayah directly whether the protesters want Obama to speak out in support of their cause, Sayah responded: “I think they do, but they’re realistic.”

I have been following the demonstrations in Iran this past week with great interest.

I was a young boy in 1979 when the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah and led to a decades-long cold and hard war with the West. It is my firm belief that the events in Iran in 1979 were the beginning of the War on America that resulted in the attacks of 9/11/2001.

I have stated on several occasions that the deaths on 9/11 were the result of actions & inactions of every President from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush as the dealt with the ripple effects of the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

Raise your hand if you think the Iranians would be marching now if Saddam had not been taken out in 2003 and successful elections in Iraq?

Can anyone honestly think that the Iranian people could have NOT been inspired by the overthrow of the brutal Saddam Hussein and the subsequent free and FAIR elections in Iraq? If you think not, you are delusional and living in a dream world.

No matter what the final outcome in Iran is, I am confident that the marches in the streets will represent another battlefield win by the United States against Islamic terrorism. The actions of President George W. Bush and the heroic deeds of our US military has had a significance influence on the future of Iran — whether it ends this week or in 10 years.

UPDATE: I’m not the only one that feels this way. Blogger Kirk Petersen remarks: It is a vindication of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and liberate Iraq.

Petersen also put me onto a column by Daniel Finkelstein of The London Times who today even more forcefully connects the dots between American ideals and actions and the protests for election fairness in Iran. Read the whole thing!

For years we have been told, we neocons, that other cultures don’t want our liberty, our American freedom. Yankee go home! But it isn’t true. Because millions of Iranians do want it. Yes, they want their sovereignty, and demand respect for their nation and its great history. No, they don’t want foreign interference and manipulation. But they still insist upon their rights and their freedom. They know that liberty isn’t American or British. It is Iranian, it is human.

It is not part of their [Iran's] precious heritage that someone be charged with a capital offence for circulating a petition on women’s rights. Nor that nine-year-old girls should be eligible for the death penalty, and children hanged for their crimes. There is no special Iranian will, even given their religious conservatism, that students should be flogged in public for being flirtatious, and homosexuals hanged in the streets.

The protests for Mr Mousavi do not just expose the lie of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory. They expose the lie that there is something Western in wanting democracy and human rights.

Precisely. There is no question that the modern-day quest for liberty and freedom throughout the world that continues today had its origins on July 4, 1776 with those visionary words and yet simple theory of self-government:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Here is the photo of a true American hero. It isn’t a photo that is being run 24/7 on NBC, CNN, CBS or even FOX News.

This is a man who, along with this family, volunteered to serve his nation in a time of war and paid the ultimate price on his nation’s own soil. It is believed to be the first Islamist terror attack on US soil since 9/11. And so far, President Obama has had nothing to say about the death of Pvt. Long and the shooting at the recruiting center.

Those who are honoring a doctor who aborted 60,000 fetuses need to see what a real hero looks like.

The American Liberal mouthpieces on TV and the internet have not only ignored the Islamist’s terror attack in Little Rock, but they seem more upset about the murder of Dr. Tiller than they did about the attacks of 9/11/2001.

The U.S. death toll for April rose to 18, the military said Friday, making it the deadliest in seven months for American forces in Iraq. The sharp increase from the previous month came as a series of bombings also pushed Iraqi deaths to their highest level this year.

In the latest violence, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a restaurant on the reservoir of Iraq’s largest dam near the northern city of Mosul. At least five people were killed and 10 wounded, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

The spike in attacks has raised concerns that insurgents are stepping up their efforts to re-ignite sectarian bloodshed as well as questions about the readiness of the Iraqis to take over responsibility for their own security as U.S. troops begin to withdraw.

Something different has happened in the past seven months.Â I can’t quite put my finger on it….. I know it will come to me.Â *tapping foot*Â What…is…it….that…happened…in November 2008?

Hmmm, maybe my intelligent readers will be able to help me remember what may have changed in the past seven months to make things more dangerous in Iraq?

In the wake of a series of murders of gay Iraqis in the stronghold of radical cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director of GOProud, a registered 527 for gay conservatives and their allies, issued the following statement.

“Instead of unilaterally surrendering the global war on terror, now is the time for the Obama administration to recommit to fighting global extremism. It is intolerable for the U.S. government to turn a blind eye to the type of human rights abuses occurring at the hands of Islamic extremists in Iraq and indeed throughout the Middle East. If the United States is to maintain its position of moral leadership in the world, then this administration must make it clear that basic human rights for all should be respected.

It is shameful that so many on the left have made excuses for the human rights abuses carried out by tyrannical extremist regimes from Cuba to Venezuela to Iran. It is time for the blame America first crowd to recognize the real threats to peace and freedom that exist across the globe.”

Where is the Human Rights Campaign on Islamic extremists & gays?Â And the NGLTF?Â Or even Log Cabin (Republicans) ?Â We all know the answer:Â *crickets chirping*

Here at GayPatriot and GOProud — we will not ignore the brutal gay purges being systematically carried out by Islamists around the globe.

The Somali pirates stole $30M last year alone through bringing terror to international waters.Â And where, my friends, do you think that money is going?Â

After the Bush Administration shut down the financing of Al-Qaeda, they had to resort to the Somali pirates.Â $30M can do quite a lot of damage when it is used to finance terror training, WMD development and fighting American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, thanks President Obama.Â Not only are you losing a third front in the Global War On Terror“Man-Made Disasters”, but violence has disturbingly increased in Iraq since you took office.

Someone please help me answer this:Â If Obama cannot stand up to Somali pirates who capture a US vessel and kidnap its captain… how confident am I that he will protect the USA from much more serious enemies who have already declared war on America and Western values and who want to murder Americans by the thousands?

Perhaps American Liberals will rally to the cause of another Islamic country making life for gays and lesbians more difficult, and perhaps more deadly….. (h/t – Infidels Are Cool)

MADRID, MARCH 24 – Morocco announces the end of tolerance with regard to homosexuality, is the title of the full page article in today’s El Pais, referring to the initiative which the Ministry for the interior in Morocco is using to â€˜confront all actions which go against religious and moral values, within the framework of the lawâ€.

An article with the headline in red on the front page of magazine Al Michaal triggered the reaction by the government in Rabat; in it a gay Moroccan couple tell the story of their wedding, reciting a prayer which comes before the reading from the Koran. The formula is very common in Morocco, between heterosexual couples as well, but it does not mean that the union is legal.

In a message quoted by El Pais, the Ministry for the interior registered â€œvoices in the media which are trying to make a case for ignoble behaviour which is a provocation to national public opinion and which are against the moral values and teachings of our societyâ€.Â The government will carry act against these people â€œwithin the framework of current lawsâ€.

Homosexuality is punishable in Morocco from six months to three years imprisonment, even though courts do not usually pass sentences for this kind of crime.Â Nevertheless arrests of gays are commonly made as a â€˜deterrentâ€.

Where is the Human Rights Campaign?Â (*crickets chirping*)

Maybe they will only get involved when things in Morocco get REALLY serious.Â You know like in Iran — where gays hang by ropes.

This is awesome.Â While the Left is fawning over the change of policy regarding the UN Declaration (good move, Obama — truly), some promininent gay Republicans are noting the vicious irony.

From a press release yesterday: [GP Ed. Note: This press release did NOT come from Log Cabin Republicans– the “official” gay Republican organization.Â Rather it is a statement from two former LCR staffers.]

â€œIt smacks of tokenism to sign a U.N. resolution on the treatment of gays and lesbians, while opening the door to closer relations with the brutally anti-gay regime in Iran,â€ said Jimmy LaSalvia, a Republican activist and former Policy Director for Log Cabin Republicans.Â â€œWhile the Obama administration should be applauded for signing this resolution, the resolution is meaningless if they pursue a foreign policy that appeases tyrants like Ahmadinejad.â€

According to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the crime of homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran.Â â€œIf the Obama administration is serious about stopping the persecution of gays and lesbians across the globe, then they will make it clear that they will not deal with states like Iran where the penalty for being gay is death,â€ said Christopher Barron, the President of CapSouth Consulting and the former Political Director for Log Cabin Republicans.Â â€œIf the U.S. is going to be a leader in defending human rights, it’s going to take much more than a toothless U.N. resolution.â€

Now here are my two cents:

Obama also wants to engage with the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah…. shall I go on?

It is important that the US join the world bodies in such action.Â But it is MORE IMPORTANT that gays are not left hanging (pun intended) as Obama begins his campaign of appeasing the Islamists around the world.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he is sending two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, marking the start of what many believe will be an escalation that will ultimately see the U.S. forces there double.

There are some 36,000 U.S. troops already in Afghanistan, and the additional 17,000 alone represent a nearly 50 percent increase.

The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as “an illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

That’s funny, I thought the American Left told me it was one of the WORST parts of “Bush’s War.”Â In fact, wasn’t there even a leftist Hollyweird movie, that made little, called “RENDITION”.Â Â My, oh my.

Pop.Â Pop.Â Pop.

Score one positive mark for President Obama.

Exit Question: Will the anti-Bush liberals who comment at GayPatriot now support this terror-fighting tool?Â Or are they just tools?

I guess we can take War on Terror off of the Wizbang category list as Barack Obama has determined that we should no longer aggressively pursue our enemies and has put an end to the War on Terror with his executive orders. He insists of course that counter terrorism efforts will continue, but they sound purely defensive.Â It sounds like he will respond after we are attacked instead of aggressively preventing an attack.Â I may be misinterpreting that, but when he halts all efforts to find the terrorists who who are plotting against us before they attack, I’m not sure what else you’d call it.

President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the “war on terror,” as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless.

Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military’s Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration’s lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.

I never thought I’d think this, but perhaps the two friends I lost in the terror attacks of 9/11 have, in fact, died in vain.

That said, if the USA is attacked nowÂ – the fault clearly will lie in the lap of President Obama who has moved us back to the Clinton Era of Denial and political correctness in the face of a declared war on the US by the jihadists.

Six more bodies were recovered from the rubble of an Al-Qaeda den hit by a suspected US missile, pushing the death toll in two separate strikes to 21, security officials said Saturday.”Six bodies of local tribesmen were found in the rubble of the house which was destroyed in a US missile strike on Friday just outside the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan district,” the official said.

On Friday officials said eight people including five foreigners — Pakistani officials use the term “foreigners” to describe Al-Qaeda militants — died in the missile strike at the house of a pro-Taliban tribesman near Mir Ali.

The strikes were the first under new US President Barack Obama and effectively dashed any hopes that Pakistani officials were nurturing that the new administration in Washington will halt such strikes.

Hours later another suspected US drone fired two missiles into a house in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, killing seven people.

President Obama needs to go on trial as a war criminal as well as the rest of his blood-thirsty warmonger Administration.Â Congress needs to cut off funding for Obama’s War immediately.

On September 11, 2001, I was working two blocks from the White House when the world came to an end.Â Or so it seemed that day.Â Â I have never felt as scared for my life and my family’s lives as I had that day.Â And over the following days and months, every time I drove into Washington, DC for work, I expected that day would end with a horrific explosion and thousands dead.

But it never came.Â President Bush promised he would take the war declared on America TO the enemy.Â Instead of fighting the war on terror as a litigated, criminal enterprise, President Bush realized this was a war and treated it as such.

As he leaves office today, I would like to personally thank President George W. Bush for doing everything he thought was right in order to keep me and my fellow Americans safe since 9/11/2001.Â While his decisions on prosecuting the war have been controversial, but the results matter.

No matter what happens, we can always say that America was never attacked again after 9/11 thanks to President Bush.

God Bless you, Mr. President.Â Enjoy your time off and know that millions of Americans thank you for your dedication to protecting us from our enemies in a time of war.

One of the most amusing things about the past eight years has been watching certain people on the left launch into paroxysms of outrage every time the name, “George W. Bush,” is mentioned.Â They even got upset that, at the close of his tenure in office, he reminded the American people of his accomplishments instead of apologizing for his mistakes. In their eyes, that good man could do no right.

And yes, despite his many flaws, he is a good man.Â Even his Democratic successor has said as much.Â But, for many of his supporters, “to trash Bush was to belong,” as if expressing animosity toward the president were the sacrament of their faith.

George W. Bush, however, is anything but the demon or clown of their caricatures.Â He was — and remains — a complex man who, to be sure, made many mistakes as president, but, who pretty much got the big things right.Â I say, “pretty much,” because while he did shift strategy in Iraq he was slow in doing so.

Above all, he kept us safe.Â Since 9/11, there have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Bush showed America’s enemies a country that does not retreat in fear, does not bomb with impunity, and most important, does not desert civilians or foreign governments that trust us. If you think that doesn’t matter, look at Libya, which disarmed its weapons program. And see how much easier Obama’s presidency will be, because Bush kept the faith.

Just as we remember Harry S Truman today more for his strong stance against the expansion of Communism in the immediate aftermath of World War II rather than his blundering economic policies, notably his attempt to nationalize the steel mills, so will people remember Bush’s resolve against the violent expression of Islamic fanaticism rather than his failure to show similar resolve against the financial shenanigans of unregulated government sponsored enterprises (GSEs).

Not just that, it says something that distinguishes the outgoing president, that, at least on matters of national security, George W. Bush is a man who learns from his mistakes.Â And the two different stories from Iraq, apparent failure in 2005-06 but success in the two years after that helps us see our nation as the land of second chances.

As I read Ancient and European history, I note how many armies forfeited military advantages through strategic or tactical blunders.Â Occasionally, they recover from their “self-created” setbacks, but more often than not, these mistakes lead to eventual defeat (and sometimes and even dismemberment of nations or empires).

Just over two years ago, it seemed we were losing in Iraq.Â We had won the initial stages of the war, but had not effectively adjusted our strategy to meet the changing circumstances on the ground.Â European moralists (or one of their imitators in American universities, think tanks and on liberal editorial boards and blogs) writing about the war (as many of them did) in 2006 (and into 2007 and even ’08), would have defined our “adventure” in Iraq as a failure caused by an arrogant assumption of a bellicose Administration confident that military might alone were enough to secure success.

Americans, however, believe that we can turn a failure into an opportunity and even success.Â We are, to be sure, not the only ones to believe this, but it is a defining aspect of our character.Â We don’t see one failure as determinant of the final outcome.

There is a lesson in this.Â And not just for political leaders.Â It applies to our own lives as well.Â It suggests that when we’ve made a mistake or suffered a setback, we too can turn things around just as President Bush and General Petraeus did in Iraq.

We’re Americans.Â We believe in second chances.Â One mistake does not necessarily doom us to failure.Â To paraphrase George Eliot’s maxim “It’s never too late to be what you might have been,” it’s as if we believe it’s never too late to succeed where once you have failed.

In an excellent post on those intellectuals who ape Jimmy Carter in favoring more Israeli concessions as a solution to the crisis in Gaza, Jonathan Tobin finds them blind to reality:

Matthew Yglesias . . . takes up the familiar theme that the outline of a peace settlement is well known (back to Taba) and that all it will take to get back there is â€œrufflingâ€ some Israeli feathers and giving Israel some of the â€œtough loveâ€ that Jimmy Carter dished out.

Missing from this analysis is, as usual, any connection with the reality of the other side of the equation: the Palestinians who stand by Hamas and their terror campaign. This blind faith in the peace process is almost religious in nature. All objective facts that might disprove its thesis are ignored.

if we continue to follow the peace process these intellectuals so consistently and assiduously espouse, we’ll only see, to borrow one of their favorite expressions, an ever-increasing “cycle of violence.”